8.2 Guardian Druid

Classes Druid
1

I picked up the Druid as an alt to get ready for 8.2 seeing that some improvements were being done and that Guardian Druid may make a comeback. I have played the Guardian spec and have finally climbed to over 1000io and here is my experience and my concerns in the future.

I struggle hard as a Guardian Druid to maintain damage mitigation to any decent degree. Often using all my CD’s just to survive with a lot of kyting. like a rediculous amount of kyting waiting for my cd’s to be active again before i can engage again. When I play as Resto Druid and have a Guardian Druid i am healing it is very clear how much they struggle. Both when i heal them and when I play as them. Other tanks are so much easier to run keys and raid with that the difference is a magnitude of difference between the tanks from Guardian Druids (DH i include here).

I have read the changes to Guardian Druid for 8.2 and after playing Guardian Druid I will be certain that the changes will not be enough. The extra Damage they receive and healing required even when Iron Bark is active is still not enough. More changes are needed to make Guardian Druid enjoyable to play. Increase Bear forms stamina and armor boost. Reduce the CD of Survival Instincts and increase the armor. Make Barkskin a 30 sec CD and increase its mitigation to 30%. I have used the talents to reduce the VD of the abilities and its still not enough. I think a mixture of the above combinations are needed, not all but additional changes are desperately needed in addition to the changes that are already on the horizon for the Guardian Druid.

Guardian Druid is extremely frustrating to play. Once you get into progression content the struggle is very apparent. At this point the Resto Druid is by far more fun to play because of all the frustrations from Guardian Druid. I wanted to play and I wanted to tank as Guardian, but after playing it and even in lower 10-12 keys and in raids its more frustrating than it is fun and ill be playing only as Resto Druid with this class. I am going to level my Paladin just so I can tank, because I want to do more tanking content but the Druid even with the foreseeable changes is going to make it a dead spec and this alt of mine will only be a healer. I want to play as Druid, but it needs more help so its not frustrating to play as or to play with.

2 Likes
2

What talent setup are you running?
What azerite traits, both primary and secondary, are you using?
What item level are you? In what keystone level are you having to kite so much?

Care to point me to a log or a scenario to support this?

It’s important not to forget that all specs are getting one new active ability we can use every few minutes, weaving that into our rotation may make certain types of content less fragile for us to do.

We have a talent that already reduces the CD of SI. In conjunction with that, the new HoA essence called Vision of Perfection will randomly proc SI for 3 seconds when used as a major choice. When used as a minor choice, the essence also reduces the cooldown by another 15%.

The rage changes in 8.2 are meant to help with this by allowing us to maintain potentially more than 1 Ironfur stack reasonably. Talents, essences, and azerite traits play into this heavily, see my first set of questions to you.

That’s honestly a bit excessive and extremely unlikely.

I would likely then say if you feel that way its something else.

There are only a few rare corner cases where I ever use Survival of the Fittest and if you feel the talent isn’t sufficient for what you’re experiencing, then we need to dive deeper into whats going on for you.

I think you are comparing apples to oranges. If you were attempting to compare Guardian to any other tank, I likely could agree.

As a veteran Guardian player, I concur it does.

But without more insight on why you are struggling with Guardian, you might as well be talking into a vacuum because there is little to no change that can come from precisely what you posted.

2 Likes
3

I feel like if you’re kiting as much as you say, you are doing a lot wrong.

1 Like
4

…how. IF uptime is the easiest part of bear. It’s one of the only things bear doesn’t struggle with compared to other tanks.

At 1k io? Are you wearing cloth on accident?

Then…you’re wrong. Like, that’s not an opinion. You are objectively incorrect. Bdk is far harder to heal due to it having a yoyo effect, and it requires less attention despite taking more damage. Not knowing that causes issues with bdk mitigation and can make it harder to handle in a fight.

Pally does good, and is great for magic damage, but longer sustained tanking starts to truck them. They’re not super sturdy, comparatively.

The only tanks that are easy to heal, even for an idiot, and still extremely sturdy are warrior and monk.

DH is just as bad as bear, relatively.

Based on what? Your clearly awful intuition?

Based on what? Your awful intuition?

Fun is subjective.

That’s not needed. Like, of all things to ask for.

Survival of the fittest.

You know literally no one has a thing like that, right. That’s insane.

A 1min and 2.5min cds are not enough? Seriously.

That’s subjective.

You do heroic and 1k io, which is what? 10 keys? Jesus mate.

Hahahhahahahahahahaha

1 Like
5

ur picking a part my concerns and forgetting the context. ur just super annoying and a troll.

1 Like
6

Is that seriously all you have to say to being called out on a long winded post filled with holes?

7

I’m in no way forgetting context, in fact that is precisely what I tried to establish in my first set of questions to you, which were:

How is that picking apart your post? I was actually trying to establish context which you failed to actually outline at the start when you made this claim:

I guess instead you’d rather call foul and point fingers rather than actually taking time to answer valid questions to establish a baseline and context to your initial claims.

The only part of your post in which I was completely dismissive was:

That is literally a 30% DR every 18 seconds.
That’s a bit much and over-powered.

1 Like
10

just gonna throw some of my hopes/ideas out there.

FR- off GCD; such a QoL especially on 15+ keys. Not so much on slower paced plays (I include raid as a slow pace).

FR again - I think the main problem is the method of delivery and lack of scaling. I like that its a HoT as it fits with druid style, but allow the HoT to be faster at low health and slower at high health to increase efficiency and reduce the chance of sniping. Currently its not an emergency and its not a sustain, so to change that so when health is <20% it will deliver the heal in 1 sec, and if at 80-100% health it will deliver it over 5 secs.
Also make it be affected by all stats Mastery (double dip would be nice but never gonna happen), allow it to Crit and be affected by Resil and let Haste affect the regen time. I know some of these are implemented, but tbh I’m not sure of the details.

Don’t touch Maul - I want a rage dump that hits like a truck for trivial content and idc that its on the GCD. Don’t make WC baseline - I don’t feel the need for another gap closer, and its a high skill talent that i doubt is going to be used to its potential by the majority of the player base.

Replace Tiger dash with the Thrash slow - tiger dash is hardly ever taken by bears and will not be missed (not even by pvpers), having a slow on that tier means the tier becomes more about enemy control (with variety in terms of WC).

Bring back berserk - one of the horrible things about guardian is running into a large pull with no rage and no BS. Rage saving can help, but given the frequency a CD would also greatly help especially for those bears that do not pool rage. Additionally in order to give guardian a more identifiable niche add in aspects of RoTS (which I would LOVE even on a much longer cd and without the DR). So Berserk with CC immunity, damage increase and leech - but not DR as straight DR is covered by BS and SI.

Fun stuff - in case the recent damage buffs are inadequate add in:
Pawsitive outlook to SotF
Twin moons to GG
Give incarnation a passive chance to proc for ~ x secs from all abilities

Oh and thanks to the Bears keeping up the good fight and hoping for some love - special thanks to those that are doing 20+ anyway and refuse to bow to the pressure.

My druid is below

1 Like
11

This is my druid btw…

12

Based on nothing but your posts from other topics, I’m gonna go ahead and just say it. It’s just you. You’re bad. You do nothing but complain and troll in every sub forum and every time someone tries to help you you lash out.

13

Bear has non-capped aoe which scales linearly with target count. With proper talent choices, this aoe feeds into our defense and rage generation. Stacking traits like TC and WFR will increase your dps by around 2-3k per target, again scaling linearly.

Bears also have three gap creators, and with proper usage these can be used to allow you to cast Swiftmend and Wild Growth. This immediately resets your grevious stacks, as popping out of Bear reduces your max HP by a lot.

The tools are there, they’re just not as obvious as with other tanks. Since they’re not obvious, it’s easier to complain than take the time to learn.

14

I think most bears reading this forum will know about TC and WFR (notwithstanding other viable traits like BS) and don’t most tanks scale linearly with target count?

Lets talk about the cost of using those Gap creators. Example a healer drops to 25% and is in a stun/silence - good time to swiftmend. So knock back (plus vortex but not necessary), Shift form, cast swiftmend, regain form. Total cost 4 GCDs, plus loss of rage>10, plus loss of IF, plus possible loss of FR. Time before heal lands is ~3 secs.
In many cases its simply better to sit and let someone else use their utility. Unless I use BS or SI or wish to kite, then the next 10 seconds after that save are going to be rough.

Now lets compare with some other tanks in a similar situation:
Pally -> 1 GCD simply heal;
BDK -> 1 GCD mass grip into LoS from healer;
Monk -> 1 GCD plus a cast; ring of peace into a heal;
Warriors -> 1 GCD safeguard (or intervene in the current Meta) and hope there is no caster;
DH -> 1 GCD plus 2 secs activation for rune.

So the tools are there; but the tax of using them is far far higher.

Rage/IF/FR should all persist through all form switches for guardians.

4 Likes
15

Why not just FR in the first place?

16

Because the purpose is to save the healer?

17

why is the healer dying? How would a swiftmend save him? Wouldn’t a ursol+typhoon work fine on their own? How would a dh rune activation time not get them killed? If you think swiftmend on it’s own isn’t enough, safeguard surely isn’t, what if what’s hitting him is outside the RoP range from a monk? what if the think causing the problem can’t be gripped?

Like, what possible scenario are you imagining.

18

Its an single example and it occurs with regularity in M+. I could have been trying to show the utility of Wild growth instead but I just picked SM.

A well timed Typoon/Ursoc does not get the healer out of the 1-shot danger zone - it just gives them more time to recover; don’t forget it not as if others are magically not taking damage at he same time.

Agreed rune is not great, but its quicker and will work in many situations. Monk RoP is also not great, but if well placed (like against/into a wall) will prevent multiple hits. Few things can’t be gripped and if that is the case they can’t be affected by typoon/ursoc anyway. Safeguard will almost certainly prevent the healer dying to the next ranged attack (or even an attack by a non-tauntable mob) to at least to the degree that SM will.

Silences cast in Shrine, Non taunt-able adds in UR and Freehold, it occurs in Siege - not gonna make more of a list as its a pretty regular thing in my experience (and if successfully tanking/healing/dpsing 15+ plus makes me bad well w/e).

19

Yeah, but where? When? How?

Do you mean the interrupt able cast? Wouldn’t that be the place to use the displacement effects, not after the fact?

These would definitely be handled better by ursols and typhoon, separately, than most other combos, actually.

The random rifle shots? Those affect everyone though. Not just the healer. And the examples you gave of other tanks wouldn’t help any more than what bear has, if not less.

20

You can cast SM directly from Bearform. Youre adding a global for shifting out when simply casting the heal will do the trick. I hope thats not what youre actually doing in game.

21

The paladin heal (LoH) is the only realistically useful ability in that list above. The rest seem pretty far-fetched to say they’re better than Swiftmend, especially when it crits and restores almost half a health bar. Even then, LoH has very limited uses with its long cooldown. Swiftmend is available way more often, plus Wild Growth is super useful to help top up the group and provide further assistance to the healer during weeks such as these with the Grievous affix. I think we have a few more tools than the other tanks to help the healer if they get behind.

22

It ends up being two globals to either WG or SM, and three to use both of them. Yeah you pop back into bear with zero rage or IF stacks, but I’ll take that over my healer dying to grevious or bursting.

2 Likes